Charm-baryon enhancement and charm fragmentation fractions in small systems measured with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper presents recent ALICE measurements of charm-baryon production in pp and p--Pb collisions, revealing non-universal charm fragmentation and providing insights into charm quark hadronisation and cold nuclear matter effects.

Contribution

It offers new experimental data on charm-baryon yields in small systems, highlighting differences from electron-positron collisions and exploring nuclear matter effects.

Findings

Charm-baryon to meson ratios are higher than in e+e- collisions.

Charm fragmentation is not universal across different collision systems.

Results inform understanding of charm quark hadronisation and cold nuclear matter effects.

Abstract

Recent measurements of charm-baryon production at midrapidity by the ALICE collaboration show baryon-to-meson yield ratios significantly higher than those measured in $\rm e^+e^-$ collisions, suggesting that the charm fragmentations are not universal across different collisions systems. Thus, measurements of charm-baryon production are crucial to study the charm quark hadronisation in proton--proton (pp) collisions. In proton--lead (p--Pb) collisions, the measurements of charm baryons provide important information about cold nuclear matter effects and help to understand how the possible presence of collective effects could modify the production of heavy-flavour hadrons. In this contribution, the most recent results on open charm-hadron production in pp and p--Pb collisions measured by ALICE are discussed.